BANGALORE: A raging fire at a newspaper recycling unit in Laggere 3rd Phase in Rajgopal Nagar police limits had the Fire and Emergency Services Department officials on their feet for over 12 hours.
The control room received a call around 12.30 am on Tuesday after around 20 employees sleeping at the unit rushed out on seeing the fire spreading rapidly.
Six fire tenders were initially rushed to the spot and seven more were brought in later to contain the fire.
According to Fire and Emergency Service officials, the fire may have started because of a short-circuit but they are awaiting a detailed investigation report.
“We had to bring down the walls of the building in order to contain the fire. In between, we ran out of water and had to source water from two neighbouring factories,” an official said.
He attributed the huge fire to the fact that the entire factory housed newspapers and a stock of oil used in two recycling machines.
The owners of the unit — Sridhar and Srinath Rao — have claimed a loss of more than `1 crore.
“There were two machines to recycle paper and one was a relatively new one. Both have been damaged completely in the fire,” police officials said.
Since the fire tenders were called in early — about 20 minutes after the fire began — the flames were stopped from spreading to nearby factories, officials said.